Georgia seem to have anticipated that their next march would be through South Carolina. Their temper and feeling toward our people, a witness, Mrs. L. Catherine Joyner, thus describes: "The soldiers were universal in their threats. They seemed to gloat over the distress that would result from their march through the State. I conversed with numbers of all grades belonging to the Fourteenth and Twentieth corps. Such expressions as the following were of hourly occurrence: 'Carolina may well fear us; she brought this war on, and shall pay the penalty. You think Georgia has suffered; just wait until we get into Carolina; every man, woman and child may dread us there.'" Of General Sherman himself the same witness informs us that, addressing himself to a lady of his acquaintance, he said to her: "Go off the line of railroad, for I will not answer for the consequences where the army passes."
The threats uttered in Georgia were sternly executed by the troops of General Sherman upon their entrance into this State. For eighty miles along the route of his army, through the most highly improved and cultivated region of the State, according to the testimony of intelligent and respectable witnesses, the habitations of but two white persons remained. As he advanced, the villages of Hardeeville, Grahamville, Gillisonville, McPhersonville, Barnwell, Blackville, Midway, Orangeburg and Lexington were successively devoted to the flames; indignities and outrages were perpetrated upon the persons of the inhabitants; the implements of agriculture were broken; dwellings, barns, mills and ginhouses were consumed; provisions of every description appropriated or destroyed; horses and mules carried away, and sheep, cattle and hogs were either taken for actual use or shot down and left behind. The like devastation marked the progress of the invading army from Columbia through this State to its northern frontier, and the towns of Winnsboro', Camden and Cheraw suffered from like visitation by fire. If a single town or village or hamlet within their line of march escaped altogether the torch of the invaders, the committee have not been informed of the exception. The line of General Sherman's march, from his entering the territory of the State up to Columbia, and from Columbia to the North Carolina border, was one continuous track of fire. The devastation and ruin thus inflicted were but the execution of the policy and plan of General Sherman for the subjugation of the Confederate States. Extracts from his address at Salem, Illinois, have appeared in the public prints and thus he announces and vindicates the policy and plan
